


This Sea Town or That Bruising City

by lymricks



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-27
Updated: 2011-10-27
Packaged: 2017-10-25 00:23:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lymricks/pseuds/lymricks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal wakes up in his pajamas on a beach far away from New York City, but everything's the same (except when it isn't).</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Sea Town or That Bruising City

**Author's Note:**

> There are probably spoilers for everything that's been aired so far, so if you aren't up to date on every episode of White Collar, proceed with some caution.

“Mozzie, if you’re going to break into my apartment, you could at least close the windows once you’re done,” Neal says irritably, rubbing the sleep from his eyes without opening them up. He’s just a little cold, goosebumps rising steadily up his arms, and he knows that his stomach and chest are probably freckled with them by now. It’s noisy, too, something Neal isn’t fond of this early in the morning. “Moz!” he says, “Close the windows.”

He doesn’t get a response.

Finally, slowly, Neal opens his eyes. The sun is bright, and he’s blinded for a moment. His head hurts. Neal won’t ever admit it, but he really regrets the amount of wine he had last night. The last thing he remembers is telling someone (Mozzie, he assumes) that he’s tired of making mistakes.

As his eyes adjust to the light, Neal realizes that his ceiling is blue.

And…cloudy?

Neal blinks and rubs his eyes, then repeats the action, but every time he looks up, the result is still the same. His windows aren’t open—he’s outside. “Moz?” he says, less angry and more confused now.

It’s not like he’s on the terrace, or even sleeping in the park. There’s water nearby, he can hear the gentle roar of the waves—a beach, Neal supposes, because when he runs a hand through his hair, it comes back covered in grainy globes of sand.

He sits up slowly, his head spinning just enough that he has to lean on his arm to keep his balance. He doesn’t recognize this place, he’s wearing nothing but his pajama bottoms and an old pair of socks, and he’s positive that he went to sleep in his apartment.

“Mozzie,” he says, “This isn’t funny.”

When the nausea (from what he guesses is a mild hangover) finally passes, Neal stands up. He’s determined to go and find Mozzie and then kill him. Slowly, probably painfully. Neal is experimenting mentally with the various ways he could surprise Mozzie using the banana knife, when he sees it.

His arm is mid stroke for a practice slitting of the throat (he’s being very _Game of Thrones_ about the whole thing) when he stops. Freezes, actually, because there is black ink all up and down his arm.

 

 _After a while it comes down to a question of life choices. Not a choice between you or her, this sea town or that bruising city; but about putting one foot in front of the other and ending up somewhere that looks like home._

“ _The Last Generation_ ” Neal murmurs, studying the ink on his arm. It’s mostly dry and a little smudged, he can see patches of the lettering on his stomach, where his arm must have lay while he was sleeping. Clearly, it had been on his arm for more than a few hours. The handwriting is definitely masculine, but nothing he specifically recognizes—not someone who he spends every day with, then.

The quote is one he’s heard before, because Mozzie loves quotes and Neal loves Mozzie, but its not one he’s spent a lot of time with. Neal prefers the quotes about going, not coming—about running, not staying.

Neal groans and runs a hand through his hair, sighing exasperatedly and looking around again. He’s the only one out here. The hill he’s on is covered in sea grass, and just down it he sees the smooth sandy stretch of a beach. The ocean water is more grey than blue, which at the very least suggest he’s still on the east coast.

“Of course I’m on the East coast,” he says quietly, “Where else would I be?”

He stretches and looks around again, still waiting for Mozzie to appear. Neal knows he has to be here somewhere; of course Mozzie is here somewhere.

When no one appears, Neal shrugs his shoulders and sets off down the hill. He sees a cottage in the distance. Maybe he can use the phone.

*****

Neal has never been on this beach, and he has never seen this house, but for some reason, it looks familiar. He reaches out a hand and presses his finger to the door, feeling the thrum of life behind the tired wooden façade. The color is tasteful, the shutters match perfectly. It’s a nice place, Neal thinks, except for the lingering smell of fish in the air. He pulls his hand away from the wood and knocks politely. He tries to avoid knocking like Mozzie, but doesn’t succeed, and the iambic rhythm rolls against the sound of the waves behind him.

The door swings open, and Neal smiles his best ‘I’m sorry I’m not wearing a shirt or shoes’ smile—but then frowns.

“June?” he says, blinking at the woman who has opened her home to him since his release from prison.

“Yes?” the woman says, peering out at him. “That’s me.”

“June,” Neal says, “It’s Neal.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know any Neals, my dear,” June says.

She’s looking somewhere to the left of his shoulder, and Neal self-consciously looks behind him, trying to figure out what she’s staring at. “June—” he starts, but then stops. June isn’t staring at anything, he realizes. She’s blind.

“Did you know my late husband?” she says, still standing in the doorway.

Neal doesn’t understand what’s going on. June is looking at him (well, sort of), and she says she doesn’t know who he is, but it’s _June_. He’d know her face anywhere. “Byron?” he hazards a guess.

The smile that spreads over June’s face is so full of affection and sadness that Neal has the urge to look away. He feels as though he’s intruding on a private moment between an old woman and the love of her life. The thought makes him smile. His June would never stand for being called an old woman.

“Oh my Byron,” she says quietly. “Any friend of his is a friend of mine. Please, come in.”

She steps back from the door, and Neal walks through it. He isn’t sure why, because he still isn’t entirely sure what’s going on, but he trusts this woman. Neal thinks about the woman donating the classic Devore suits to a thrift store who welcomed him not just into her house, but into her life. June, who makes him Christmas dinner even though she is going off skiing in the Alps, the Tupperware stashed carefully in his fridge with reheating instructions printed on them in tidy handwriting.

The inside of the cottage is nothing like the inside of June’s house. Where her New York home is grand and elegant, this is small and shabby. Neal’s nose wrinkles involuntarily as he looks around; the fish smell is even stronger inside the house than it is outside.

The blind woman in front of him walks with steady confidence, moving around piles of things on the floor without a second of hesitation. Shabby, Neal suddenly understands, is not the right word. This beach cottage is loved and lived in—so unlike June’s New York City home that he wonders if this isn’t June after all.

 

“My Byron was a wonderful fisherman,” she says. “He and his friend Ford spent so many hours out in those waves. They were looking for their great white whale.” Neal can’t see her face, but her voice is soft and fond.

“Did he ever find it?” Neal asks curiously.

“No,” June says, “He gave it up for a small black fish.”

Neal is confused for a second until June turns around and beams at him. She means her. Byron caught her. “What about Ford?” he asks.

“He’s still looking,” June says, and she looks sad now. “He’s out there in a boat somewhere, waiting to hook that last big catch.”

Neal nods his head like he understands, but then realizes that she can’t see him. He’s about to say out loud that he liked her story, but she stops him, reaching out a bony hand and pressing it against his shoulder. “Oh my dear,” she says, “You must be freezing. Let me get you some clothes.”

She disappears through a curtain into another part of the house, and Neal doesn’t follow out of respect. He looks around the room again, taking in the plethora of fishing equipment and odds and ends. He likes the space—he wouldn’t live here, but he likes it anyway.

“Here we are,” June says as she walks back into the room. Neal is presented with an old pair of jeans and a white cotton button up. “Byron won these clothes from a man in the village who weaves his own cotton,” June explains. She turns her back while Neal changes, which he thinks is a sweet gesture, even though she’s blind.

“Let me guess,” Neal says, and he sort of laughs his way through it, because either this whole thing can only be a prank, “Sy Devore?”

“Did he tell you that story?” June laughs, but Neal shakes his head slowly.

“Where am I?” he asks instead of answering, still laughing. He tells himself its not hysterical laughter, but if he’s honest (Neal is almost never honest) it’s a lot closer to it than he wants to be.

June doesn’t answer.

~ ~ ~

She makes him dinner that isn’t served on china, but a beautiful set of plates that June tells him are made out of seaglass that’s been melted down. She jokes that she hopes it’s not too salty for him, and Neal can’t help but smile.

“You’re more than welcome to stay,” she says over glasses of homemade plum brandy as they sit in straw chairs, staring out over the water. “You remind me of Byron—or Ford.” She’s quiet for a little while, and Neal lets her get lost in her thoughts, thinking his own instead. “But I think you should go.”

Neal looks at her sharply, “So I’m not welcome to stay?” he teases dryly, raising an eyebrow at the older woman.

“That’s not what I said,” she laughs. “Stay if you want, but I think you should go.”

“Where should I go?” That’s a loaded question, but Neal knows he has to ask it.

“On a walk,” June says softly. “Find your great white whale.”

June is quiet for a long time after that. Neal almost thinks that she’s fallen asleep, but she speaks again.

“Or your little black fish.”

~ ~ ~

When Neal leaves June’s cottage, he leaves the beach behind. She gives him a well-loved pair of leather boots, “Good for walking,” she says firmly when he protests that he can’t possibly take anything else from her. She kisses his cheek and clasps his hands in hers, and then Neal walks off into the sunset.

As he walks along the side of the road, the sound of the waves fade off behind him. Soon, even the smell of saltwater is gone from the air, and his head is free of sand. Although Blind June (as he’s calling her in his head) was a bit of a whirlwind, Neal hasn’t forgotten the strangeness of his predicament. He isn’t anywhere he recognizes, and Neal has been almost everywhere. He wishes he had a cell-phone, a pager, hell, he’d even settle for carrier pigeons at this point. He wants to call someone to come get him. He wants someone to come pick him up on the side of the road and laugh at him for wandering off.

He wants to call Peter.

But there is no phone or home in sight, just an endless stretch of road and field. He could turn around and go back to June’s. Enough time would pass that he could get his hands on a phone, but she hadn’t had any answers when he’d asked her where he was before, so there was no reason she’d have answers now. Turning around might help, but it feels a lot like another dead end. So Neal keeps walking as morning melts into afternoon, and afternoon fades into evening.

The sun is setting behind the fields of corn, casting everything in a strange pink and purple light, when he finally sees her. Neal gets the distinct impression that Alex is riding up to him on a unicorn.

It isn’t a unicorn though, it’s a white horse, and she pulls to a stop just a hair too close for comfort. Neal reaches out a hand, stroking the horse’s muzzle to hide his flinch.

“Hello, Alex,” he says, grinning up at his old friend.

He gets a raised eyebrow and a toss of hair for his trouble. “Do I know you?”

“You’re Alex Hunter,” Neal says. He’s tired of this. He wants to go home. He doesn’t _want_ to play games with Alex tonight. “You’re the granddaughter of the man who received the last distress call from a German U Boat filled with unbelievable treasures. You’re an old enemy and a great conman,” Neal pauses, “You’re a good friend.”

Alex laughs. “Really?” she says, “That’s quite the story, my old enemy and good friend, but I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong Alex Hunter.”

Neal groans, “This can’t be happening. You’re Alex Hunter. The music box? Tell me you remember the music box.”

Alex straightens up her posture and frowns at him. “How do you know about that?” she hisses. This Alex doesn’t sound as devious as his Alex does, but she definitely sounds as dangerous.

“We looked for it together,” Neal says, “When we were both still getting started. Don’t you remember?”

She just stares at him, sitting on the top of her white horse and looking more than a little superior. Neal sighs, exasperated. “Do you have a piece of paper?” he asks. She raises an eyebrow at him. “Alex,” he says, “Do you have a piece of paper?”

Reluctantly, she pulls a square of paper out of her saddlebag and hands it to him. Neal doesn’t look up until he’s done, but he grins. It’s a real grin, the kind of smile he reserves for the people who become more than two-d passing figures in his life. Alex is one of those rarities. She’s something tangible.

Neal’s movements are deft and practiced. He’d spent hours perfecting this skill once upon a time, and now he could make the flowers in his sleep. He folds everything perfectly, and when he’s done, he holds the result out to Alex. A beautiful, white, origami flower.

She stares at it for a long time, and neither of them speak. Eventually, Alex reaches out a hand for the flower. Neal drops it into her palm and watches as her fingers curl around it. She pulls it back close, holding it near her heart as her eyes slide back to Neal.

“When I was a little girl,” she says softly. “My grandfather used to tell me stories about a music box he lost.”

Neal has heard this story before, but Alex clearly doesn’t remember telling it, so he lets it slide. “In the music box was a secret compartment. Inside that compartment was the secret to everything—happiness, wealth, you name it, the box had it. I found his music box, Neal.”

“Actually,” Neal protests, “I found it.”

Alex talks over him. “There wasn’t anything in it,” she says. “There was just…” she trails off and looks back at the flower in her hand. “One of these. I guess someone else got there first.”

“Yeah,” Neal says. “Me. Alex what’s wrong with you?” he pauses, “Where am I?”

Alex laughs at him again. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Where are any of us? I’m glad you found the box first. It was a dream of mine,” she looks him up and down in a way she has before, after meeting Sara. “Dreams so rarely live up to reality.”

She shifts. “You know what, though?” Alex asks him.

“What?” Neal asks.

“I’m glad you found it first. It means I can stop looking,” she turns her horse around, starting to ride off in the other direction. Then she stops. “You mind if I keep this?” Alex asks, holding out the flower.

He shakes his head and is rewarded with a rare smile.

Neal starts walking again.

~ ~ ~

He wakes up again, this time curled on the side of the road, just out of sight behind a pair of bushes. His bones ache and his mouth is dry. Neal has never exactly ‘roughed it.’ He’s never even gone camping. If anything, the events of the past few days have convinced him that he never wants to. Clearly, he isn’t missing much.

It’s the first time in a long time he has no reason to get out of bed. But considering he doesn’t have a bed to get out of, Neal doesn’t want to lie around and contemplate the mysteries of life. Instead of the Chrystler building, he only sees more corn and more road. This isn’t his view or his scene. He stands up slowly, stretching out his aching muscles. There’s no serenity to be found in his sort-of yoga poses, just the promise of more walking. There’s only more road to travel, and no sign of anyone else.

Neal wonders why Alex didn’t offer him a ride, but wondering isn’t going to get him anywhere, and he’s tired of being nowhere.

His feet drag in the dirt, his shoulders are sore, and the back of his neck is sunburned. He doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He wants a shower and a bed. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’d really like a hug.

And come to think of it, Neal wouldn’t mind sitting down for a beer with Peter.

He’s whining and he knows it, but there’s no one around to hear him, so he indulges.

The landscape is just as barren as before, and Neal wonders where in the Northeast he could possibly be. It looks more like the Midwest, or maybe someplace in the United Kingdom, but it’s been such a long time since he’s had to really think about where he is (or where he should go next) that Neal finds himself unable to tell for certain.

Either way, knowing where he is doesn’t help with the other dilemma. That is to say, why everyone in his life has suddenly gone nuts.

That’s probably unfair, because he hasn’t seen everyone in his life, just June and Alex. Mozzie was already nuts, so he doesn’t count, but Neal hasn’t seen him. Even _if_ he concedes that everyone in his life is crazy, Neal still doesn’t have an answer to the mystery of June’s blindness, or the reality of Alex’s sad smile.

He looks down at his arm. He’s been lost for at least two full days now, but the black ink is still present, reminding him just how far from home he is. No amount of walking is going to bring him home. He doesn’t have a home.

He almost did, once or twice. There have been places that were warm enough, or well lit enough to cast away the shadows that follow him wherever he goes. At the heart of it all, Neal’s true talent is pleasing people. He might lie to them, or fool them, or do a magic trick for them, but when people meet with Neal, they tend to feel happy. How long that lasts always depends on what Neal wants, but it doesn’t matter. He likes the power that his words and personality lend him.

Those powers are useless out here in the middle of nowhere, with the strange people he knows but doesn’t know.

Way in front of him, maybe a mile out, Neal can see someone else coming. It’s a girl, with dark hair, and her gait is confident. She’s too far out to really make out any details, and anyways, Neal has to look into the sun to see her, so he studies the ground instead and decides to wait until their paths cross.

He doesn’t drag his feet anymore, and he straightens the white collar of the shirt June gave to him. This place never seems to end, but it doesn’t really matter. Neal is a master at figuring things out, and he figures that whoever brought him here—whoever took him out of his apartment in the middle of the night—will bring him back eventually.

Besides, he’s been gone for a while, and somewhere in New York City there is an FBI agent who wants to find him.

Suddenly, Neal stops.

He stops dead in the middle of the road and stares down at his feet.

Cautiously, he lifts the leg of his pants. What he sees makes him stare. What he sees makes it hard to breathe.

There’s no tan line, not even the slightest hint of the tracker that should still be locked around his ankle. He bends over and runs a finger over the skin where it should be, but it doesn’t appear. Neal isn’t sure why he expected it to.

This is the first time he’s thought about the anklet, but it isn’t the first time he’s thought that Peter would find him.

Maybe because these days, Peter has more reasons to find him then sending him back to jail. Neal thinks about wineglasses and beers shared, he thinks about late nights in the office, hunched over a forged painting until both of their eyes cross. He thinks about the only real friend (besides Mozzie) that he’s ever had for any length of time. It’s a friendship without a quid pro quo. (That’s a lie and Neal knows it, their friendship is an exchange of sorts, but it’s _more_ than that, and that’s what’s important).

Neal lets the leg of his pants drop. For the first time since he woke up on the beach, he feels a flash of fear. With no anklet and no phone, how is anyone going to find him? Agitated now, he runs a hand through his hair and turns to look behind him. He could still go back to the cottage, but he’s gone this far now, and there has to be something up ahead. He scrubs at his face and turns back around.

The girl from a mile up the road is suddenly right in front of him.

And Neal can’t breathe.

He can’t even think, or move, or do _anything_ but stare into a familiar pair of wide, warm blue eyes.

He chokes on his words, “Kate?”

“Hello Neal.”

*****

“You know who I am?”

Kate smiles at him. Neal sucks in a shakey breath and holds out his hand. He’s afraid to touch her. This is Kate, who is dead. Kate—his Kate, is alive and breathing in front of him.

Not for the first time, he’s struck by her resemblance to Elizabeth. It hadn’t mattered as much when the two were separate in his head. Mrs. Theif and Mrs. Suit, as Mozzie would call them when he’d had a little too much to drink. Out here though, wherever here is, Kate reminds him of Elizabeth.

“Yes and no,” Kate answers him.

She reaches out and takes his hand, wrapping her cold fingers around his warm ones. “Kate, you’re freezing,” he says quietly. He doesn’t have a jacket to shrug off, but if he did, he would offer it to her.

“No Neal,” she says.

The way she says his name is strange. He’s always liked the way his name sounds on her lips, once he’d told her the real one. She has (had?) a soft, lilting way. She said it with the barest hint of a question tacked on the end. Even when she was angry, Kate had always said his name like she was asking for him. But the way she says it now is different. Instead of turning up, the edges of his name blur together and fall down. She says it like she might read the phonebook—meaningless letters strung together that she’s told make up someone’s identity.

Alex and June are different, but Kate can’t be. Neal needs this Kate right here to be the Kate that he’d left behind the day Peter had found him out. He needs her to be as soft and lovely, as trusting and dangerous, as beautiful and hurtful as his Kate had been.

“Need,” Mozzie had informed him once, a long time ago, “Is American slang for ‘want.’”

Neal can’t look at her anymore, so he looks down at their locked fingers instead. “You’re dead, Kate,” he reminds her. He wonders when his life became the kind of life where people need reminding of that.

Kate stares at him, puzzled. “No Neal,” she says softly, reaching up a hand and touching his face. He leans into it. “You’re dead.”

“Huh,” Neal says, completely inarticulate in the face of something that makes so much honest-to-God sense. That answers every question he’s had since he woke up on the beach, what feels like a lifetime ago. It explains why Alex and June were so unlike themselves, it explains why there aren’t phones, it explains why Kate is here, seemingly alive.

It doesn’t explain the ink that still stands out as brightly on his arm as if he’d written it five minutes ago.

“How did I die?”

He’s honestly curious. There are a thousand ways he could have gone. He hopes that it was on a mission, but then he changes his mind. He doesn’t want to have died somewhere that Peter would have seen it. He hopes he died in a back alley, maybe as the result of a crime he’ll now be famous for. He hopes they didn’t recover his body. He doesn’t want his remains to end up in the hands of any of the few people they could potentially belong to. He wouldn’t mind of Mozzie got his last bits and pieces. Mozzie knows how to go about death the right way.

“In an explosion,” Kate says. Neal smiles. It’s almost romantic that he and Kate went out the same way. “An explosion on a boat,” Kate continues. She looks confused now. Her hand keeps moving up to brush hair out of her eyes that isn’t there. Her movements are staccato and agitated, and she yanks her hand back from his face as though she’s been burned. “I was hesitating—we were going to run away together—but there was someone else and I hesitated. The boat blew up with you on it before I could get on.”

Neal feels his heart move up into his throat, and he grabs Kate’s hand too tightly. “Kate!” he says. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know why you’re alive, Neal,” Kate says, “But I’ve moved on. There is…and there was…someone else in my life. He’s why I hesitated that day. I don’t want you back, Neal,” she pushes at him, pushes him back, away from her. Neal stumbles. “I don’t need you,” she insists.

Neal hears Mozzie’s voice again, “Need is American Slang for want.”

Kate doesn’t _want_ him.

Standing in the dirt as her small hands push insistently at his chest, shoving him back and away, Neal wonders if Kate has ever wanted him. Well, if she’s ever wanted _Neal_.

He knows she’d fallen in love with Nick Halden—but he is a huge difference from the reality of Neal. He was going somewhere, and Neal was too, but a very different somewhere for a set number of years. Could she have fallen out of love with him while he was in prison? Peter had warned him of something like that once, but Neal had ignored him.

Kate’s tiny hands beat against his chest hard enough to hurt, and Neal tries to duck away. “Stop,” he says softly. He’s pleading, vulnerable in a way he hasn’t been in front of _anyone_ else before, but this is Kate, she’s seen every inch of him. She’s the only person who has.

“Why can’t you just stay gone?” she snarls. She sounds angry. Neal shudders.

“Kate please stop.”

Her hands press harder against his chest and he stumbles, falls back. He lands in the dirst, staring up into Kate’s blue eyes and trying to figure out what he did wrong here. Neal is unraveling at the seams, because the only person whose ever been able to pull his threads has an iron like grip on all of them. He feels himself breaking. Neal Caffrey is going to lose it, and there won’t even be anyone here to see.

“Excuse me?” a quiet voice says from somewhere off to his left. “Miss? I believe you’re hurting him.”

Neal knows that voice better than he knows his own. He knows it without looking, without thinking. He just _knows_ it.

“Miss?” the voice continues. “Miss you need to stop now. Please stop.”

Except, maybe he doesn’t know that voice. Neal is still staring down at his hands and the dirt he’s sitting in, but there’s no way the person he associates with that voice would ever speak so timidly or uncomfortably. He’s not talking about conspiracies or the dangers of lying in the dirt. He sounds concerned in a quiet, frightened way.

The new arrival seems to get Kate to her senses and she looks down at Neal. She doesn’t offer him a hand up, but she does stare down her nose at him like he’s so much of yesterdays bad news. “Move on,” she says, rolling those blue eyes that Neal still dreams about, “I did.”

He blinks and she’s gone, just like that. She’s disappeared from right in front of him and Neal is alone on the dirt.

“Well, I’m glad she’s gone,” Mozzie says from behind him.

Neal feels a hand on his shoulder and lets himself be guided up. When he’s standing, mostly steadily, on his own two feet, he turns around. “Oh, God,” he says quietly, because even though June lives in a house that smells like fish, and Alex rides horses, and his dead ex-girlfriend is alive, there is something _truly_ spirit crushing about seeing Mozzie in a suit.

It’s a beautiful suit, classic and tailored, but still just a little too big on Mozzie’s smaller frame. The tie matches the shirt, the glasses match the tie, it’s more than baffling, it’s terrifying. Neal swallows hard. “What are you wearing?”

Mozzie beams at him and turns in a circle, “Do you like it?” he sounds almost shy, “I saw it and I just had to get it. I could never have enough suits.”

Neal is definitely dead. And he’s definitely in Hell. Because Mozzie is wearing a suit.

“Yeah, Moz,” Neal says, because he can’t be rude to Mozzie, “It looks great on you.”

Mozzie beams again, the smile so wide that his face nearly splits in half. “Thank you,” he says. “Now that I’ve saved you from the evil woman who was trying to kill you, I was wondering if you might like to take a walk with me.”

Mozzie is asking him questions in a soft spoken, nervous voice. It’s the kind of voice that speaks to deep insecurities—the kind of insecurities that even best friends don’t speak about. This quiet, suit wearing Mozzie is so different from the one Neal knows, but at the same time, he’s horrifying familiar. He may carry himself differently, and speak differently, and even _smile_ differently, but there is something underneath his skin that is purely Mozzie, and Neal latches onto that shred of familiarity like a lifeboat.

“Of course,” he says, “Lead the way.”

They start off down the road together, and as they walk, Mozzie talks. He’s the first person who has answers to Neal’s questions since he woke up on that beach. It’s soothing to listen to Mozzie plan, even though neither of them know what they’re planning for. The few feet stretch into miles and miles, and in the distance, Neal sees a city.

“I’m afraid I can’t take you any further,” Mozzie says, turning to look at Neal and smiling. “But you can find your way, and if you can’t, you can always come back and I’ll take you with me, wherever I go,” this Mozzie looks at Neal for a long time, and in that quiet, honest voice, he says, “I’m very lonely.”

For some reason, Neal can only say, “I’m sorry,” and “I know.”

They shake hands and Mozzie gives him important bits and pieces of wisdom. Neal sets off toward the city in the distance, but before he gets more than a few yards away, Mozzie calls his name. “Neal!” he says.

Neal turns. “Yes?”

“I know you think that every door closes once you walk out of it, but you’re wrong. To be kept out, you have to lock the door behind you.”

It’s a weird thing to say, but Mozzie turns and walks away before Neal can ask him what he means.

~ ~ ~

It doesn’t matter how far or long he walks, every time Neal looks up, the city skyline is still so far away. It looks a lot like New York, Neal can even recognize a few buildings, and he knows that he wants to get there, he just doesn’t know how. He keeps looking behind him, wondering if there’s anyway he could possibly be walking in place, but every time he looks he sees a tree or bush he passed, way back, far in the distance. He’s definitely moving forward, but the city must be too.

He’s not getting any closer to it, and suddenly, he’s exhausted.

This day doesn’t seem any closer to ending than the city seems to Neal, and all he wants to do is lie down. The dirty grass on the side of the dirt road looks inviting, and Neal wonders if anyone would miss him if he just stopped for a short nap. He closes his eyes and feels his whole body list to the right, toward the grass. He just wants to lie down for a minute.

“Oh sweetie,” a voice says quietly, right next to him. “You can’t just give up.” He jumps a foot in the air, and next to him, Elizabeth laughs. “I’m sorry,” she says earnestly, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“You didn’t,” Neal lies.

“Of course I didn’t,” Elizabeth says knowingly. She presses a hand to Neal’s cheek. “I know you’re tired,” she says quietly, “But you really need to keep going.”

Neal is exhausted, and Elizabeth looks like Kate, but her voice is so much softer than Kate’s ever was. Her eyes are so much kinder. He feels safe enough to fall to pieces, just a little bit. “I don’t know where I’m going,” he says, frustrated.

“Yes you do,” Elizabeth says, and she takes Neal’s hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “It says it all right here.” She turns Neal’s palm over, baring the skin of his arm to the bright sunlight. Neal looks tiredly down at the quotation he’s memorized by now.

“This isn’t a map,” he protests, “It’s a quote. A stupid quote.”

Elizabeth only smiles at him, “You’re tired,” she says softly. “Why don’t you sit with me for a moment?”

Neal wants to tell her he’s tired of people telling him to stay, to go, to move on, to walk, and to sit, but instead, he plops down in the grass and wraps his arms around his knees. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Of course you don’t,” she says, sitting down next to him. If anyone were there to watch, Neal might feel embarrassed about how soothing it is when she starts rubbing his back, but he doesn’t say anything. He just lets her hand make slow, warm circles against his skin through the cotton fabric of his shirt. People touch Neal all the time, but so few people touch him with as much—what’s the word he’s looking for—honest _affection_ as Elizabeth does.

Someone else does, he knows it. He can feel it in the firm grasp of a handshake, or a warm hand pressed reassuringly against the back of his neck, but he can’t place who either belong to. He can only focus on the tangible here and now, the feeling of Elizabeth’s soft warmth pressed against his side. Neal shudders.

“A lot of times,” Elizabeth says from next to him, “We never know where we’re going. A lot of times, where we’re going is just where we stop moving.” She looks around them at the endless stretch of grass and road, and the city so far away that Neal still isn’t sure it’s real. Finally, her kind eyes land back on Neal, and she smiles. “Is this really where you want to have gone?”

Neal’s eyes move slowly around him. The grass is dying, he notes absentmindedly, and the road is cracked and chipping. Everything here looks as tired as he feels, except for Elizabeth. “Is this where you went?” he asks her curiously, because he’s given up on trying to figure all these people out. He still hasn’t ruled out Kate’s theory of his death.

“No,” Elizabeth says with a smile. “I came here looking for you.”

For longer than he’d like to admit, Neal considers sagging into her side and burrowing his face in her shoulder. He considers giving everything up to lie here with the comfort that Elizabeth offers, just by being who she is. She’s like a big sister, except nicer. Someone who is protecting him from the hard realities of the landscape. He doesn’t sag though, he straightens up, because in the back of his mind, he knows that if he does give up now, he’ll have disappointed her.

Neal takes a deep breath and scrubs at his face with his hands. He only hesitates for a second before he stands up. Like a gentleman, he offers a hand to Elizabeth and pulls her to her feet. She’s beautiful, he thinks, and she loves him.

Neal’s cheeks flush. Elizabeth is proud of him.

“You’re doing so well,” she tells him quietly, clasping his hands in hers. “I know you can fix all those things that went wrong in the past,” she lets go of his hand and runs a finger over the ink on his arm. “Neal,” she says, so softly and privately that if his relationship with her wasn’t so overtly platonic, it might have made him flush, “This isn’t a stupid quote. It tells you everything you need to know.”

Elizabeth leans in and kisses his cheek, then hugs him tightly. He leans into her and notices that she smells like peppermint and dog and something else, something ancient and soft and lovely.

When she finally lets him go, he isn’t tired or thirsty anymore. He doesn’t _want_ to give up. Not just for himself, but for Elizabeth, too. He wants to make her proud. He turns away and starts walking toward the city again, he stares it down, determined to reach it and reach it soon. Maybe there he’ll find some answers.

As he’s walking away, a thought occurs to him.

“Elizabeth?” he asks, turning back toward her. “Where’s Peter?”

Elizabeth frowns and tilts her head to the side. “Who’s Peter?” she asks.

*****

When Neal was little, really, really little, he smashed his knee up riding his bike. That wasn’t unusual. Neal had always had a terrible tendency to hurt himself. As he was picking himself up from the dirt and examining the pool of blood blooming through his skin, a man appeared. He was tall, taller than any of his Mom’s boyfriends, and thin. “Heya, Kid,” he’d said. Neal had said “hi” back, but was too busy staring up at this stranger. For all the imaginrary friends he had, Neal had never really had real life ones.

The man taught him a few card tricks and before long, Neal forgot all about the blood on his knee. The whole incident had been a fluke thing. A good Samaritan stopping to distract a kid from a minor injury. Except in the end, those three card tricks had decided Neal’s fate.

He’d gone home and his mom had been so impressed. That was the first time Neal had realized he could truly _impress_ someone. After that, everything had gone downhill.

He met Mozzie and made it big. He wasn’t just some kid living in New York anymore. He was _Neal Caffrey_ and that was a _thing_. You make some enemies thought, when you be yourself with no restrictions. Neal had learned that the hard way.

It’s the first time he’s thought about those three card tricks in a very long time. Around him, the landscape is less barren now. The trees and grass look healthier, and even the dirt looks less dry. The ground doesn’t crack under his feet, and no puffs of dust reach up from the earth to tangle in his legs.

“Who’s Peter?” Elizabeth had said, looking so honestly puzzled that Neal hadn’t wanted to push her. Her voice replays in his head. Mixed with the guileless look in her eyes, Neal could almost believe that she doesn’t know who Peter is. But that, he thinks, is impossible. Elizabeth without Peter? No.

Yet everything about this place he’s in is impossible. The people he’s met, the thoughts he’s thought, the city in the distance that only seems to move further away with every step he takes. Everything here is unreal, and everyone here is a fake.

“Impossible,” he says out loud.

“Oh I don’t know about that, Caffrey.”

He shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. “Keller.”

The man looks as impeccable as always. That is to say, if he were wearing a nicer suit and had brushed his hair, he might look almost as good as Neal. Neal can’t help but laugh to himself, in June’s hand me down cotton shirt, jeans, and work boots, he’s not looking his best either.

Keller, the blue collar rip off with bonus violent tendencies. That sounds about right. “I should have known you were behind this,” Neal says.

Keller looks at him and laughs. “Behind this?” he asks. “Behind what?”

“This,” Neal says, gesturing around him, “Am I drugged?”

“No, Neal,” Keller says, still laughing, “You aren’t drugged.”

“You’ve done something to me,” Neal insists, readying himself. He’s not so good at violence, but he thinks maybe he could handle a little self-defense.

“I’ve done nothing to you, Caffrey,” Keller insists. “Well, I have done something, but its not nearly as diabolical as you think.”

Keller holds out his arm, and like magic, Kate is there. Her soft hand curls in the crook of Keller’s elbow and she smiles. “Hello, Neal,” she says, exactly like she said it before (was that only yesterday? Time moves strangely for Neal now).

Neal feels as though he’s seeing everything and nothing all at once. He feels as though he’s been punched in the stomach, and had his heart ripped out too. Here, in the place, he gets to see one of the few things that Neal Caffrey has ever been really, truly afraid of. Kate has moved on. Kate has moved on to _Keller_.

He wants to call it a downgrade, but it isn’t. He wants to protest that Kate would never, but he can’t be sure. His Kate is dead, and this Kate is cruel in a way that seems familiar, but that he’d rather believe his Kate was never capable of.

“This isn’t a victory,” Neal says quietly, because Keller might need to be reminded of that.

“Au contraire,” Keller says snidely, “I got the girl.”

“Everything is different here,” Neal protests. “Everyone is different. This _doesn’t count_!”

Thump, badump, thump, thump.

Neal can feel his heart hammering inside his chest as he stares at the thing he always contemplated. Strange, he thinks, that this nightmare of his hurts so much more to see than he could have imagined. He’s alive. He knows it with a sudden clarity that makes the ground and sky invert. He’s alive. This is real. He is not dreaming.

Everything pales in comparison to this one moment, to the sight of Kate’s lips pressed against Keller’s cheek. This is everything he was afraid of all along, and it is here, and it is real.

Few things in Neal’s life have ever broken him enough to bring him to his knees. The feel of the explosion hot on his back, that did it. The sound of his mother’s car as it drove away, never to return, that did it. The sight of Mozzie in a hospital bed—that nearly did it. Nothing else has ever come even close enough.

Neal Caffrey has his limits. He’s realizing them one by one as he walks on a road that only gets longer.

For a second he fights with himself. He wants to say her name. It’s on the tip of his tongue. ‘Kate’ he thinks, but his lips don’t move. Only his eyes do as they trace the familiar lines of her figure from her toes to her eyes. Her cold eyes. Her _dead_ eyes.

If this is real and he is alive, then Kate is dead.

Neal never would have guessed that knowledge would give him comfort, but it does.

Keller has been speaking the whole time. Taunts, Neal can only guess, words designed to dig out what remains of Neal’s resolve until he has give up completely. He see’s Keller’s lips moving, but hear’s Elizabeth’s voice. ‘Who’s Peter?’ she says, all kindness without contempt. Neal swallows hard.

“…not the differences that matter,” Keller is saying. “Neal? Neal! Pay attention.”

Neal’s eyes snap up from Kate’s hand on Keller’s arm to Keller’s eyes.

Keller waits.

Neal shakes his head and blinks a few times. He brings this strange place back into whatever clarity he can muster. A beat passes, then two. Finally, Keller continues. “It’s not the differences that matter,” Keller repeats. “It’s the similarities.”

Kate and Keller walk away, alliteration and cold calm. Neal swallows thickly and looks behind him. Perhaps June is still in her cottage, he thinks, maybe Elizabeth is still waiting. Mozzie said he could go with him.

All of them, though, all of them had told him he had to keep walking.

They’re his friends, Neal remembers suddenly. They’re his friends. Kate and Keller aren’t—not anymore.

Neal doesn’t want to keep going, but Keller doesn’t want him to keep going either.

Neal puts one foot in front of the other and locks his eyes on that faraway city. Just to spite Keller.

Just to get the last word.

~ ~ ~

“Don’t let my ball get away!”

Neal has lost count of his footsteps, the number of times he had to lift each leg to drag him away from that spot where he’d seen them kiss. The voice, juvenile and feminine, drags him out of his thoughts. He turns on instinct, catching a bright green rubber ball in his palm.

“Is this yours?” he asks the little girl who is running up to him. She looks familiar.

She beams, “Yes, thank you. I worried you would take it.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Neal lies.

She beams at him and takes the ball, bouncing it against the hard packed Earth. It hits each time with a satisfying _smack_. The little girl seems to enjoy it as much as Neal does. “Hey,” he says, crouching down so he’s at eye level with her. “What are you doing out here all alone?”

“I’m looking for my big sister,” the girl says with another grin. “She’s lost, but I’m going to find her.”

She’s still smiling, but Neal feels a little sick to his stomach now. He has a guess for who this little girl might be. “What’s your name?” he asks.

“Sara Ellis. No ‘H’ at the end.”

This doesn’t fit with what Sara had told him. She was thirteen when her sister disappeared.

Unbidden, Keller’s voice rings back through Neal’s mind. _It’s not the differences that matter, it’s the similarities._

“It’s nice to meet you, Sara with no ‘H’,” he says, holding out a hand. She giggles as she shakes it.

“Would you like to help me find her?” she asks once she lets go.

“Wouldn’t you like to go home instead?” he says gently. Her parents might be worried. Or her guardian. Whatever. Someone has to be looking for her.

Little Sara (as he’s calling her in his head) purses her lips. She looks so much like Big Sara (Neal makes a mental note never to call her that to her face, should he see her again) that Neal has to suppress the laugh that threatens to bubble out of him. “No thank you,” she says, polite and firm.

She’s a bossy little thing, this Sara. That should come as no surprise.

“Why not?” he asks.

“I just don’t wanna, it’s lonely there.”

“Home is lonely?”

“It isn’t really home. It’s just a place I’m living in,” she explains, taking his hand and tugging him along. “See, in the stories, home is full of people you love. Places you stay are just places. I’m in a _place_ , not a home. S’why I have to find my sister. Then I’ll be home.”

She’s articulate for a child this small. Neal shouldn’t really be surprised, but Sara has always had a penchant for surprising him. “You’re a very little girl to have such big ideas, you know.”

She ignores him. “When I get big, I’m gonna help people find lost stuff. Maybe they’ll find home in their lost stuff, just like I’m gonna find home when I find my lost sister!”

She’s not so different from Big Sara at all, then. He thinks about what Keller said. This place seems to find everyone at the heart of them. The qualities that Neal loves (and hates) in the people in his life are magnified by the…strangeness of their character. June’s warmth, Alex’s restlessness, Kate’s cruelty, Keller’s ability to hit him where it hurts, Elizabeth’s love, and now Sara’s determination.

But where does that leave him? All he’s done since he woke up is feel sorry for himself. He’s felt broken and like he’s tearing at the seams. Neal’s felt so _lost_ since he got here.

Is that all he is at his core? He wonders. Is he just lost?

Neal wishes he had someone to talk to.

Sara keeps pulling him along, and as they walk, she tells him stories. Sara has the most fantastic stories. She barely comes up to his hips, but in her tales she is a Goddess, a Princess, a wizard, and a pirate. “I didn’t like being a pirate, though,” she explains stubbornly. “All the others don’t break rules, they just make new one’s, so they don’t do _anything_ wrong or get in _any_ trouble. Pirates get in _loads_ of trouble. I don’t wanna be a pirate.”

“I’m a pirate,” Neal tells her, because its true and he owes Big Sara a lot of truths. Maybe telling Little Sara will ease his guilt.

She turns her wide eyes on him and her mouth forms a comical ‘O’ shape. She recovers quickly. “Are you in trouble a lot?” she asks.

“Yes,” Neal tells her honestly. “But I met a nice captain who agreed not to lock me in the brig if I help swab the decks and clear out all the rot.”

This makes Sara smile.

“I also met a Goddess-Princess-Wizard,” he says with a serious smile. “She and I are good friends and she helps me sometimes.”

“Does she know my sister?” Sara asks. “I’m still looking for her.”

Neal squeezes the little girl’s hand. “I know,” he says softly.

They walk in complete silence for a long time. She glances up at him as their feet scuff the ground. “I have to go now,” she says. “The city is close, and I won’t find my sister there.”

She sounds sad, and she wraps her tiny arms around Neal’s waist and hugs him as tight as she can. “It was cool to meet a real pirate,” she says, “even if you already met a captain who made you honest.”

Sara turns and runs away before Neal can say anything else. He watches her disappear over a hill behind them, his hand lifted in a wave.

Sighing quietly, Neal turns back to the road, his eyes already searching for the city in the distance.

But something is wrong.

It isn’t in the distance, it’s right in front of him.

It’s drawn as a line, as clear as day in front of him. The half he stands on his dirt and sad and never-ending questions.

He steps onto the pavement and the sounds of New York City envelope him.

When he lifts his eyes again, he sees a familiar set of shoulders.

Then, everything hurts, and he feels cold and tired. The warmth of Elizabeth’s words and Sara’s tiny hand leave him until he feels nothing but alone and barren. He can’t help the ragged shout that tears from his chest.

“Peter!”

*****

Neal has been missing for three days.

Peter had known it was a bad idea to let the Marshalls use him for their case, but it’s not like he can say “Sorry, US Marshalls, but I think not.” He has power, sure, and pull—lots of pull, just not with those kind of guns.

Elizabeth had been furious with him, and that had made it worse. She’d lectured him about friendships, and trust, and something about letting Neal out into the world on his own with _no support_. Peter had tuned her out by then, preferring to stare into his bottle of beer and indulge in some self-loathing, but the point had gotten across. She was disappointed.

The phone had rung around 4am to tell him that the watch that had been kept on Neal was gone. Completely gone. They had no idea where he was.

It had been a long few hours of waiting to get in contact with someone else who could tell him what was going on, but finally, after too many hours, he’d been able to talk to the agent in charge—he’d been completely useless. “We think Caffrey ran,” he said to Peter, sipping smugly from a mug of coffee. The mug and coffee belonged to the FBI, Peter almost snatched it back and told him to find his own damn caffeine.

“Caffrey didn’t run,” he’d explained, “Something is wrong.”

“His tracking dot just disappeared. There’s no sign of him anywhere. It’s his style.”

“You’re wrong,” Peter had insisted. “I know Neal. He wouldn’t do it, not like this.”

The Marshall had shrugged, and Peter had been told they were looking into it. Twenty four hours had passed, then forty-eight, and still nobody knew where Neal Caffrey was. Against his better judgement, Peter had asked Mozzie if Neal had run. He’d asked Sara if Neal had been acting strange lately. He even had an involved conversation with Satchmo, involving sniffing one of Neal’s ties and tracking him down (that particular one had been at the end of hour forty-nine, when Peter had consumed somewhere near that number of beers).

In the end, no one had found Neal. So Peter had taken to the streets, searching for his missing CI in every corner he could think to investigate. Alex hadn’t been happy to realize she was that easy to find, but she’d promised to keep her eyes and ears on the street. Even June was talking to “old friends.” Everyone was waiting for the appearance of a tall man in a hat.

That’s where Peter finds himself now, on a Tuesday afternoon in late October. It’s cold in New York, but pleasantly so, and the leaves are falling from the landscaping pots. This would be his favorite weather if he weren’t so stressed. Elizabeth makes a wonderful spiced pumpkin drink—he’s been wanting Neal to try it for a while now.

Unless he finds Neal, though, that isn’t going to happen.

With a heavy sigh, Peter sweeps his gaze over the area. This isn’t a particular beautiful part of Manhattan, although it isn’t bad. The sidewalks could use a little maintenance, he thinks, but the trees and garden areas are showing off their best Fall colors. Peter scrubs at his face and sighs. He’s never felt so defeated when he’s looked for Neal in the past.

Of course, in the past it was a game. This is a hunt for Neal’s life. Peter isn’t having any fun.

“Neal,” he mumbles, kicking the ground. “Where are you?”

He’s just about given up, and is heading off in search of a coffee, when he hears it. The word sounds like his name, but the voice screaming it is so raw—so crude and hurting---that he almost doesn’t stop.

Peter turns around, peering down the alley the voice had come from, and his breath catches in his throat. “Neal?” he says quietly, then louder, “Neal!”

He moves forward, hand on his gun, and looks around for any threats. Nothing happens and no one comes. After a moments hesitaition, he steps all the way into the alley. Neal is there, swaying on his feet, wearing nothing but a pair of his stupid silk pajama pants.

“Neal,” he says quietly, shrugging off his jacket and sliding it around Neal’s trembling frame. Neal is still swaying on his feet, his eyes are unfocused. “Hey, Caffrey,” Peter says, “Are you with me?”

“Peter?” Neal’s voice is husky and thick, as though he’s been yelling. Peter grips his arm tighter.

“I’m here, buddy,” he says carefully. “Can you tell me what happened? Is that the only thing you’ve had on for the past three days? You must be freezing.”

Neal just looks at him, then blinks. “No,” he says softly, “June gave me fishing clothes.”

“June hasn’t seen you, Neal,” Peter reminds him, placing a steadying hand against the small of Neal’s back.

“Where’s Moz?” Neal demands, “I don’t want him to be lonely.”

“He’s looking for you, we all are.”

“Did Sara become a pirate?”

Peter would laugh, except the words make so little sense, and Neal has never been one to be nonsensical. He presses against Neal’s back, pushing him toward the sidewalk, toward the car.

“Tell El thanks,” Neal says. “I almost gave up, but she told me to keep going.”

“You talked with El?” Peter says, using his free hand to dial the office. He gives up though, because Neal lists off to the right and almost falls flat on his face. Peter steadies him, keeping his grip loose. Neal still grimaces in pain. Peter puts his phone away.

When they step out onto the sidewalk, the wind blows Peter’s jacket and gives the FBI agent a good look at Neal’s chest and stomach. He’s covered in splotches of black, blue, yellow, and purple. Every shade a bruise could possibly be is present on Neal’s skin. Peter sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Who did this to you?”

“You weren’t there,” Neal says in his tired, dreamy voice. “I looked for you, but you weren’t there.”

Peter closes his eyes against the wave of guilt that washes over him. “No more questions, buddy,” he says gently. “Let’s get you in the car.”

He slides Neal into the backseat and bundles him up in a blanket that Peter and El keep on hand in case of a spontaneous picnic. For a second, he’s not sure where to go. A large part of him wants to take Neal back to El, let him sleep it off in the guest room. The rest of him knows that he has a responsibility as an FBI agent to take him to a hospital and get his anklet back on.

He’s just closed the back door when his phone rings. “Peter Burke,” he says gruffly.

“Agent Burke, this is James Hund from the Marshalls office. Caffrey’s anklet just went back on.”

“What a strange coincidence,” Peter says, his temper flaring. “I just found him in an alley, wearing nothing but pajama bottoms and covered in bruises. He really must have messed up his grand escape plan, don’t you think?”

“Agent Burke, that tone is hardly necessary, we were—”

“Ignoring the danger to Caffrey’s life because it made your life easier to pretend. I get it. I’m taking him to the hospital. Meet me there—or don’t, I don’t really care.”

He hangs up his phone and slides into the driver’s seat. A quick glance in his review mirror confirms what he’d hoped, Neal’s eyes are closed. He’s probably fallen asleep.

As he pulls up out of the hospital, Neal’s voice sounds out behind him. “I looked for you,” he says, “but you weren’t there.”

~ ~ ~

“What do you choose, Neal Caffrey?”

Neal turns his head to the side, squinting into the blinding light.

“You have so many choices,” the deep, soft voice says. Neal reaches out, trying to catch hold of something, anything. His finger catches in the material of a suit, and he tugs, hard.

“An excellent choice,” the voice says.

~ ~ ~

Neal wakes up.

Peter is there, and Neal’s fingers are curled in a white-knuckled grip around the sleeve of his suit. He lets go, embarrassed. “Good morning,” he says, because it seems like the right thing to say.

“Oh thank God,” Peter says.

“Why Peter,” Neal says demurely, raising an eyebrow, “I didn’t know you cared.”

It’s a deflection, an obvious one, and Peter ignores it. “Neal,” he says seriously, staring him down. Neal glances away, looking at his hands, at the window (not out it), at the ceiling. He looks anywhere but Peter’s concered face, because how do you explain this? How do you explain that you met everyone who matter, except for him, in this strange place. He wonders which is the sea town and which is the bruising city (although the answer is really fairly obvious, and he can pretend that he doesn’t know all he wants, but he’d be lying). Neal wonders what would have happened if he’d grabbed something else, something that wasn’t Peter.

Mostly, he wonders why Peter wasn’t there. Neal had _needed_ him, and Peter wasn’t there.

“I don’t know what happened,” Neal says. “I woke up in my pajamas and didn’t know where I was, so I started walking.”

It’s not a complete lie, he wonders if Peter will buy it. Despite everything, Neal hates blatantly lying to Peter.

“I gathered that much,” Peter says dryly. So he isn’t mad, Neal realizes, that’s a good thing. “What I want to know is what happened to you. You’re covered in bruises, you’re dehydrated. You’ve lost weight. Neal, you couldn’t have been _walking_ for three days, so what happened? We have to catch the guy in charge.”

Neal has brief flashes of pain, of boots with steel toes, of running, but nothing concrete enough to latch onto. He doesn’t remember anything from those three days—except for the place where everything was different, but also the same. Neal isn’t sure, but he thinks telling Peter about that place would be a horrible idea.

“I don’t remember,” he says honestly. “I have not a clue. Does it matter? I’m back now.”

Peter frowns, but lets the matter drop. Neal pretends to be sleeping when Jones drops by a bunch of security camera footage.

Neal isn’t on a single image leading up to the alley where Peter found him. He isn’t there, and then in the next frame, he just is.

~ ~ ~

“Are you sure you’re going to be ok?” Peter sounds concerned. The car is pulled up just outside of June’s. The Marshalls had wanted to hold Neal, but without any hard evidence that he’s actually done anything wrong, they were forced to release him back into Peter’s custody. Neal is relieved. Peter’s custody is much better.

“I’ll be fine,” Neal says, a little uncertainly. He hasn’t seen anyone except for Peter since he woke up. He heard Jones, sure, but he hasn’t had a conversation with anyone. Inside, he knows June is waiting. Mozzie’s up there too, and maybe Sarah. Elizabeth has promised to stop by with dinner for everyone, and looking at the door now, Neal sees an origami flower—a sure sign that if Alex isn’t around now, she will be soon.

What if everyone is different?

“Ok,” Peter says, but he sounds equally uncertain. “Why don’t I come up with you? You can show me why your wine is so much better than my beer.”

Neal says yes too quickly, he knows he does, but Peter doesn’t comment on it.

They’re shuffling up the steps to the door when Peter stops. “I almost forgot,” he says, “Someone dropped this off at White Collar for you this morning. I was holding onto it until you showed up.”

Neal takes the wrapped brown package from Peter and opens it carefully. Inside is a book.

“What is it?” Peter asks, trying to peer over Neal’s hands at it.

“It’s a book of poems,” Neal says quietly. “ _The Last Generation_ by Cherrie Moraga,” he falls quiet, running his fingers slowly over the spine of the book. “She’s a wonderful poet,” he adds. “I’ve never been a poetry person, but she’s quite famous in the gender studies circles of literature. A beautiful writer.”

Peter is respectfully quiet as Neal looks over the pages. One is bookmarked, Neal opens it and reads out loud the quote that he’ll never be able to forget—never again.

“ _After a while it comes down to a question of life choices. Not a choice between you or her, this sea town or that bruising city; but about putting one foot in front of the other and ending up somewhere that looks like home._ ”

Neal swallows hard and looks at Peter for a few seconds.

“That’s appropriate,” Peter says with an easy smile. Neal frowns. Peter doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation—he just thinks they’re pretty words. He opens his mouth to protest, but before he can, Peter is pushing him inside the house. June and Mozzie are standing by the door, he can see Alex around the corner, and Sara is walking toward him down the stairs. He smells food. Elizabeth, too, then.

“Welcome home,” Peter says.

Neal glances around the room, and he can’t help but grin. This place _is_ starting to look a lot like home.


End file.
